After Atlas

I’m still not even sure I believe that now. Sounds like the sort of bullshit my psych supervisor would say.

Maybe one day I’ll be able to live somewhere with a garden. I’ll be old but skilled enough to still have some consultancy work to pay for the space to grow real food. Hands in the dirt again. Doing something real. No people around. Yeah, that’s the dream. Strange how the things we rail against and hate in our youth can be the things we crave as we get older.

I made a mistake when I was young and didn’t know how the world worked and I have paid for it. Many, many times over.

That’s the trouble with all these bloody lawyers. They build in the loopholes when they’re on the right gov-corp committees so they can exploit them later.

Don’t believe anything on the news feeds. It’s all just a circus for the masses.

“Do you still shout at people when they talk about their faith?”

I shake my head. “I grew out of that. Now I mostly let them damn themselves with their own ignorance.”

Journos are twisted sods.

I’ve grown out of seeking emotional self-destruction. But even now the doubts are slithering in, making me question whether the hellish foundation my life is built on genuinely equates to coping.

I know enough to never take journalists at their word.

If there’s anything I’ve learned in the years in this job, it’s that whatever you need is in the data. You just have to know which paths through it to follow and how to eliminate the extraneous without losing patterns.

Her voice cracks and I fight the tug of memories trying to pull me back to that place where people thought he was the center of the universe. I feel a flash of hatred toward her for being so broken by the loss of him, for needing him so much when he was just a man who scooped up the human detritus from the edges of society and fooled them into thinking they were part of something special.

The data is always there. It’s just a matter of knowing where to look.

Nobody does emotional distancing from reprehensible behavior better than the British, after all.

That’s the trouble with these violent mersives: once the limbic system gets involved my higher cognitive functions are screwed.

Show me a person who doesn’t have ongoing problems and I’ll show you an AI.

I’m not sure what the masses enjoy more: being swept into a fervor about the latest big story or the backlash against it. It all ends the same way: by the time whatever is being hyped actually happens, most people have used up all the fucks they could possibly give about it.

The priest didn’t have one of the magic gems stitched into his head though, because he thought that talking to everyone else meant that you never listened to yourself anymore.

No. I won’t think about that. I’m not the man the press wants me to be. I am not the victim here.

She looks at me like I’m a car engine that’s been making a strange noise.

Everybody is on a leash. Some are more obvious than others.

I hate dealing with these people.

No, I hate dealing with people, but the rich ones are the worst.

The car takes us along a long, winding drive, the kind reserved for the sort of place owned by people who want you to spend the last minutes of your journey appreciating just how rich they are.

It’s the first rule of any change to a licensing agreement: it’s not for the benefit of the end user, no matter what they say.

She speaks with the authority of the ignorant.

I often expect the worst. This is one of the rare times when I’m hoping for it.

All too easy to find the needle when you know exactly where to look in the haystack.